Week 5 Newsletter: October 2-6

Welcome back everyone! We had such a great last week of the session, with lots of practice in intentionality and perseverance, along with celebration of personal growth, growth as a tribe, and the success of our first full session. Here’s a look into our week!…

In history/civilization, the foundation and navigator transition studios learned about the beginning of slavery in the colonies and how the higher demand for particular crops such as tobacco lead to colonists buying slaves from Africa. We also read about the war between the Massachusetts colony and the Native Americans because of the colonies expanding westward. For our history activity, the Eagles made traditional African stamps out of potatoes and sponges! Pictures included below!

The navigator and launchpad studios continued learning about Hamilton’s early life in history this week. Hamilton learned so much about commerce and currency so early in his life because of his employment in a trading company. He “wrote his way out of poverty” when he started writing and getting published in newspapers; one of his most notable first pieces was about a hurricane that devastated the islands. This is when he started being recognized for his talents and people started a collection to send him to school in America. Quite the interesting and influential individual!

In art this week, the students had fun with building structures and painting. The foundation and navigator transition studios worked together to build a city out of poster board; they split up into teams to each build a different building structure, then put them altogether and built a Halloweentown! The navigator and launchpad studio also did some free painting and some of them even worked on their packaging design for the business fair.

The chess quest is quickly coming to its final stages and challenges! This week the Eagles learned all about chess tournaments and the many rules involved. We played a game of chess tournament jeopardy and then on Friday they had their first chess tournament!

For writing workshop, we had our last week of exclusive journaling, as we will begin our writing quests in session 2 when we are back from break. For the foundation and navigator transition studios, the prompt was: “Halloween is coming…do you know what your costume is going to be yet? If not, what are your ideas? If you had an infinite amount of money and materials, what would your dream costume be?” While the navigators and launchpad studio dug deep with the question: “What does it mean, to your personally, to be an American in today’s political climate? Are you proud to be an American? Are you content with where we are as a country? Why or why not? Or are you looking for change? If so, do you feel you can be a part of the change? Who do you want to be… in terms of being an American?”

Finally, the Eagles signed the contract this week! The studios’ contracts are promises to each other and themselves to always be on a hero’s journey, to live honestly and intentionally, and to be there to support and respect each other through whatever peaks and valleys they may face. Contract signing always feels like such a wonderful seal to our community and tribe, and it was a fantastic way to end the session.